Newbie DarkRadiant Questions

[Bienie]

Thanks guys, it's a bit hard for me to follow since I don't have a really good understanding of the terms you are using, so let me explain what I want the final product to be.

There are these oil paintings on wood background that I have photographed. They are basically late medieval / renaissance motifs that I think would look great on the wooden panel modules that Springheel made.

I guess that means that I want to make a decal, because the image is cut out so it needs to have transparent parts. I have no need for partial transparency (I don't think, but maybe I should experiment and get some wood grain showing through).

I haven't been able to see the material definitions of the stock decals, I couldn't find them in the base texture.pk4 file TDM folder. I did however look at some custom material files and TGAs in some FMs and thought I could make it work that way, but I guess none of them were quite the same as what I want to accomplish.

Looking at your example there Vanished it seems my main problem might be that I don't have the "map" set. Maybe I also need some kind of blend then so it won't glow in the dark. Here's a picture from how it looks atm in DR:

[VanishedOne]

It sounds as though you want an alphatested material. Assuming your alpha channel is set up as 1 = opaque, 0 = transparent, then

name/of/decal
{
  DECAL_MACRO
 {
  blend diffusemap
  map path/to/image
  alphaTest 0.5
  }
  // here you could insert more stages: the bumpmap from the wood material, maybe a specular map if it's shiny paint
}

[Bienie]

Thank you, I finally got the decal to load in TDM! Only one problem though... It loads as pitch black

 

 

 

I don't know if it's an Alpha Channel problem... I can't understand this error I'm getting in GIMP, and Google yielded nothing. I tried without layer mask, only alpha channel, only layer mask and with both, all yield the same result as above.

 

It's not a material file problem right? This is what it looks like now:

textures/darkmod/decals/panel_couple_music
{
   qer_editorimage textures/darkmod/decals/panel_couple_music_ed
  DECAL_MACRO
 {
  blend diffusemap
  map textures/darkmod/decals/panel_couple_music
  alphaTest 0.5
  }

}

[VanishedOne]

I'm not very familiar with that program, but which version are you using?

 

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8267075/save-only-layer-mask-in-gimp#comment47255229_8271091

[demagogue]

That's a known problem that's been answered somewhere (in this thread?) before.

It'll happen if you use the wrong type of DDS, since there are multiple types.

And for TGAs, I don't remember exactly, but I think you're supposed to convert them to DDSs before they'll work.

I know I had this problem before, but it was a few years ago. So I'm not 100% that's it.

[AluminumHaste]

TDM will work with TGA just fine, only reason to use dds is to save storage.

TDM works with dds dxt1 and dxt5.

[Obsttorte]

Try blend blend.

[VanishedOne]

Is there anything I can do per AI class to override mines' detonate_on_actor behaviour, so ghosts can walk through/over them without setting them off?

 

I can shoot broadheads through my ghost but he still triggers mines, even though they both seem to be technically projectiles. (Actually I don't mind being able to attack him directly, Thief-style; it's the idea of a ghost setting off landmines' sensors that makes him seem a bit too corporeal.) I've tried monkeying about with big_monster, clipmodel_contents, cylinder, mins, maxs, solid, use_combat_bbox, and also offsetModel in combination with these in hope of getting him to float above the mines. His materials (of those that aren't nodraw) are set to nonsolid (and noimpact). I'm guessing maybe his origin (at ground level) is involved.

 

This may or may not be related to the problem Destined was having with splash damage:

 

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/17092-transparent-ai/page-3?do=findComment&comment=381645

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/17555-splash-damage/

Edited November 11, 2017 by VanishedOne

[Destined]

I am not sure if I have tested mines, when I was working on ghosts, but the problem sounds familiar. I think that the mines do not use collision to determine if they should explode but rather some kind of proximity trigger. Thus, I don't think that it is possible to prevent the observed behaviour. For the splash damage I found a workaround, but it would definitely not applicable to this problem. The only solution I could think of right now would be to redefine the entity-type of the ghost, so it is not recognised by the mine. However, I fear this would be a lot of work and I am not sure if this is even possible.

[Bienie]

I'm getting one step closer to solving this now... The image shows up ok in TDM when I switched from blend diffusemap to blend blend, but now I'm getting the glow in the dark effect instead. Maybe I need to use both filters somehow? What lines of text am I missing / what variables should I be experimenting with?

 

 

 

 

textures/darkmod/decals/panel_couple_music
{
   qer_editorimage textures/darkmod/decals/panel_couple_music_ed
  DECAL_MACRO
 {
  blend blend
  map textures/darkmod/decals/panel_couple_music
  alphaTest 0.5
  }

}

[VanishedOne]

So the colour channels did save to the file. Strange; I wonder whether DECAL_MACRO messed something up.

 

You could try blend filter, like Obsttorte suggested. I would also try blend gl_dst_color, gl_src_color.

[Obsttorte]

Instead you could also use a black background in the image instead of the alpha channel and then use alphatest. That's how it is done with fence textures for example.

[VanishedOne]

Some bits of the image look pretty dark though, so using colour as the basis for the alpha mask might produce unwanted holes.

[nbohr1more]

Thank you, I finally got the decal to load in TDM! Only one problem though... It loads as pitch black

 

 

 

I don't know if it's an Alpha Channel problem... I can't understand this error I'm getting in GIMP, and Google yielded nothing. I tried without layer mask, only alpha channel, only layer mask and with both, all yield the same result as above.

 

It's not a material file problem right? This is what it looks like now:

textures/darkmod/decals/panel_couple_music
{
   qer_editorimage textures/darkmod/decals/panel_couple_music_ed
  DECAL_MACRO
 {
  blend diffusemap
  map textures/darkmod/decals/panel_couple_music
  alphaTest 0.5
  }

}

 

I had a lot of trouble with DECAL_MACRO when trying to help on BCD. I gave up and just used noShadows, sort decal (etc).

It seems that polygonOffset also is a problem with lit materials. So the solution was simply to manually adjust the decal distance.

[VanishedOne]

Ah, now I run a search for it... http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/7577-decals-and-blending-problems/

 

Apparently I've never used it on a light-interactive decal. Sorry about that.

 

As the linked thread says, you might need to move the decal slightly forwards if the surface below starts interfering with it.

[ERH+]

It seems like there are some geometry/ polygon/ map size limits other than 8192 entities or collision models after all. I had reduced entity number from almost 8000 to 6500 but best way to avoid malloc error while dmapping was reducing "big room" sizes. Now I have 16300x16300x7600 room, 24500x24500x33200 room, 5000x5000x3000 and some smaller like 3400x3800x1200. Sometimes turning big patches into func_static allowed avoid blue screen but now cutting down spaces isn't helping any more - anyone have some knowledge about what directly causing dmap crash? Maybe dividing bigger patches, maybe reducing complexity in patch inspector? I will probably try but at this scale it will take a while to redo dozens of entities and I don't even know if "error counter" is going up or down with those actions...

[AluminumHaste]

Have you tried turning on logging in darkmod.ini?

[ERH+]

What is it doing? How exactly should I change this file?

[AluminumHaste]

Open it up, set everything to 1, then start your dmap. When you crash, a darkmod.log file is created with what it was doing last. Ideally you would only enable logging for certain categories, but I'm not sure why you are crashing.

[AluminumHaste]

But if you're getting a bsod then it's a buffer overflow in writing memory.

[VanishedOne]

Depending on the complexity of the big rooms, possibly an AAS-related crash...? http://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=4233

 

Edit: although in that case I'd have expected to hear about brushes rather than patches.

Edited November 19, 2017 by VanishedOne

[ERH+]

Areas I was cutting down had no AI or one tiny room restricted by monster_clip. And I remember some old posts stating that if you just make a colossal room, it will crash/dmap for hours even if it don't have anything in it.

[VanishedOne]

The nearest thing I remember is this, then: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/16678-what-are-current-max-limits-for-the-following/page-3?do=findComment&comment=359239

 

So maybe subdividing spaces with more visportals could be worth a try...? Although that post was specifically about inlining models.

Edited November 19, 2017 by VanishedOne

[ERH+]

Maybe another approach: if I export f_s to some model format with few skin variants - how can I switch it's skin? skin_lit works on single model bound to single light I guess and I need multiple models reskinned.

[Obsttorte]

skin.

 

skin_lit and skin_unlit are for light models (eletrical lamps) or models with windows that should change their appearence depending on the state of a nearby light.